


THE COLOR PINK

by defeated777



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1950s, Age Difference, Also Inspired by The Handmaiden (2016), Angst and Romance, Blood and Violence, Both Poppy and Pearl are lesbians, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Cheating, Closeted Character, Erotica, F/F, Femme/Femme, Infidelity, Inspired by Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov, Internalized Homophobia, Korean Character, Light Dom/sub, Loss of Virginity, Mail Order Bride, Minor Original Character(s), Older Woman/Younger Woman, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Romance, Sexism, Slow Burn, Smut, Stereotypes, Vaginal Fingering, also murder, racial fetishization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:41:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26050573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defeated777/pseuds/defeated777
Summary: Alternatively titled Closet FilmsPoppy Sinclair (born Min Soonyoung, 1922) is the undeniably breathtaking bride to a prideful man who treats her like an adornment, Pearl Waters the virtuous youngest daughter to a wealthy, conservative family. It is the first time they cross wing-tipped eyes that they know—know that it will be each other's arms, or the grave.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Kudos: 3





	THE COLOR PINK

All in all, it began with but an itch—a sense, a so very characteristically human instinct; all in all, if I must tell you the truth, it began with dread. 

By that early morning, to the chanting of the birds and the smell of sugary sweetness heavy in the air, I came down the pristine stairs that might have been the pride of our home, to my mother's great displeasure covered in deep-blue carpet, so costly but at the very same time so tedious to maintain, in a drowsy haze. It was the second—or perhaps the third—day of August, not quite yet at the devil's tail of summer's end as the days were not so warm as they could be when the sun drew life from all of my grandmother's precious blossoms, and yet as I walked in the kitchen, my mother, Clementine Waters, known for her extreme secrecy and a head of well-kept curls, busy at the stove, the air felt oppressive, archaic. 

It mattered only slightly to me at that very moment, of course, as my eyes were still worn with the swollenness of the morning and my stomach so void that blessings curled upon its tongue, its call even impelling my father to rise his head. He had been reading the news paper with an almost unwavering fixation but a breath's time before his eyes, so much like mine, met those of my own—reading a small section regarding the economy of our country and others, astray in the midst of a great many articles about politics, poverty and power, I presumed. 

Unlike him, I never did care much for such matters: when I did read the paper, those unlucky times father left it behind on the kitchen table and mother was speaking to one of her girlfriends, lithe fingers tightening around the telephone, I liked to read up about the protests in the South, tracing my fingertips over the letters like they were Braille and my curious, if not somewhat confused eyes over the monochrome photos of those involved. 

Even when I was but a child, learning criminally quickly of the prominent line that seemed to be drawn between black and white as it expanded before my eyes like a face stained with fear, I had wondered why—why one was good, the other bad, but more importantly, why some held hearts phantom tendrils of ice, incapable of loving the black as they did their white neighbors, brothers, sisters and friends. Why they made foes of people who had done nothing to them; people who could have made fine friends instead. Split-knee young, I wondered why they chose a world of black and white and banished the earth for what it truly was, for what God had made it: an ever-expanding garden of flowers and fruits, of colors that were the most beautiful when united. 

Still, they were of little use, those quiet ponderings and questions I dared not to voice, for my father always made things clear around the dining table when I brought up the handful of black kids I went to school with, when he had liquor-tar breath and engine oil hands, black hair a mess of wind blown hair—to me, however, his words established only one unfortunate truth: my father was not a righteous man. 

Among other things, through the years, I had learned that men only seldom were born anything but bitter. 

"Good morning, sweet pea." My mother's voice was but a hair's breadth from too shrill as she kissed me, her red-painted lips staining the skin of my left cheek, then the crown of my head, my hair, tied up with a little blue ribbon around the base, inexpert and lopsided. Faultlessly coiffured so very early in the morning—or at least in comparison to myself—she smiled as I murmured a handful of words of gratitude for the pancakes she had prepared for my father and I and placed before the both of us, eyes blinking wide. 

Father said nothing, his gaze the cut edge of a rough diamond. 

If I'm honest, I often thought of why they had gotten married, my mother and he, that wildflower summer in July, she only a few hopscotches away from her sixteenth birthday and he already a dashing gentleman with a house—our house, now—built out of old money and heavy bricks. I thought of why, if he loved her, for the umpteenth time, that morning, he seemed incapable of showing it. My mother was a beautiful woman. Not the kind of lovely that could turn a scholar into a fool in a squint, prettily flat chested and wild like a honey-limbed river nymph; no, my mother was more Grace Kelly than Brigitte Bardot. My mother was lovely, but sharp. Wore gloves of silk and had long legs, sun-tan from her knobbed knees to her thin feet. 

Even though I knew not yet what I know now, I often thought that my mother deserved more. 

Alas, such was simply the way of things. 

"Honey," papa said then, finally, clearing his foggy throat, "do you know where all of my black-inked pens are? I just cannot seem to find them. All I have are red ones, curiously."

Father thumbed his glasses into place, fingers curling around his fork as mine did to touch my sternum, two shoulders and heart, sign of the cross, and mama frowned. 

Frowned, like she didn't know. "I've got no idea, honey. All of your black-inked pens are gone? My, that's... curious, indeed." 

A wink my way, then, single baby teeth of mine tucked away in a clandestine grin. 

When father looked to me, though, I couldn't help myself any longer. Tangles of my unruly hair in my face, a devilish smile tugged at my lips, the corners of my mouth, like mama's, pointing heavenward. 

"You can draw... draw hearts, now." I suggested meekly, stuttering at the sight of my father's displeased expression. "Pretty, red hearts. That's right, right, mommy?" 

Mama did not affirm anything. 

"Child." Father's voice was harsh, toeing the line of cruel. 

And yet, I was just that. 

He was right. Very, very right. Prettily, I was nothing but a girl-child at eighteen, but a few months shy from nineteen whilst other girls, at this age, were married, some mothers; I was a willful, if still incredibly virtuous girl and altogether lost cause, made up of strawberry lollipops and 75 cent magazines full of photographs of sparkling, golden men hidden in my drawers (some belief it would make me stop fawning over Natalie Wood), right beneath my floral underwear and bras, skin around my plush mouth worn with cookie crumbs and sheer lipgloss I knew not how to finely apply as most women did. 

I was naïveté personified, tender and unique and blind and restless in my youth, but I would never allow my father to call me a child as if it were something to be ashamed of. 

"I'm not a child!" I rose quickly from chair, little hand clumsy, knocking over the glass of ice cold lemonade before me. The drink stained father's newspaper—but fortunately not an inch of his white shirt—a petulant shade of yellow and I brought my hand to my parted lips, eyes wide, spine taut, as I awaited an inevitable tirade—

But nothing from his mouth, only his befuddled brow, and then, the telephone, its shrill ring, the air muggy, thick. 

"Go get the phone, Pearl." 

Shaken, I did as I was told, cautious of causing any more trouble. I carried my body to the hallway, where the telephone hung against the wall, and sighed deeply. 

Swatting at a critter that resided unbothered on my shoulder, I pressed the phone against my ear, little white jewels I had forgotten to take off the night prior ever so slightly pinching against my skin, and though I had parted my lips so very quickly to announce that whomever was at the other end of the line had reached the Waters family—as etiquette suggested—the other person spoke before I could. 

"Good morning, Michael, baby! I miss you so! It's about time you call me back... my bed feels so empty, so cold, without you. You do know how well we bond under the sheets." 

A feminine voice, pretty but nauseating, like first love—something I had not yet experienced. It sounded like four ex-husbands and the fifth sitting under the dirt, one with nature. I flinched—Michael. 

My father. 

My face went cherry-red, mouth quivering. In wet-lashed wonder, worry, nothing came from me. Not a word, nor a breath. I could not answer her. No, I knew not what to tell her. 

And what would I tell my mother, if anything? 

Feverish, so very warm at once that I felt ill, I put down the telephone, seeing nothing before my eyes but the image of her, a secret hidden in plain sight—I knew not—yet—what she looked like, but I knew so very well what my father was drawn to, which direction his eyes lingered. I had a good idea. 

As I had always been a quiet child, the room my silence granted me offered me the opportunity to watch where, when, no one else did. I learned to pay attention. Boy-watching, some girls admitted to, but I—I partook in father-watching. I'd learned which waitresses' hands my father stuffed wads of bills into with an unassuming smile; which women he turned his head to watch as they strode by. Often, they were young. Young, untainted, barely past their twentieth summer. So very much like me, in a way, but not at all. 

(There were certain things about me he could not abide to, and so he would tell me, just as well: the roughness of my hair, the soft swell of my tummy and thighs. I, naturally, grew fond of both. My thighs and I banded together, and if he, or any man, for that matter, detested it, my quiet but passionate defense of my flaws, all the better. I would swallow their crude remarks like air.) 

"Pearl?" 

"Yes, yes, mama." Though my voice still trembled, I attempted my best to collect the shards of me quickly, as I knew how to. There was no point in spilling what I knew then so abruptly. Not yet, no. "A woman who dialed the wrong number. I'll be right there." 

And so, with heavy shoulders, something like injured angel wings, I returned to the kitchen. My face might have been wet-tracked, but it seemed that it was subtle, for there my mother and father sat, still. Unmoving. So terribly oblivious. Mother had cleaned the mess I had made, and father, as I looked to him, then, really looked to him, was picking at his plate, his white shirt, embellished by buttons that were like pieces of the moon, pearlescent, untouched, and briefly, I imagined how many different lipsticks had stained its collar. 

Too many. 

Only a few heartbreaking minutes passed by, I, myself attempting at a crossword puzzle with shaking hands, when mama spoke again, shaking her head. "You heard your father, Pearl. Put the pens back where they belong. And do change your attire. It just is not responsible to prance around a man wearing such flimsy little skirts of silk. You know how men are, don't you, honey? I've told you so many times before." 

I frowned—I had been wearing a skirt, indeed, as I so frequently did, one blue as the eyes of one of the porcelain dolls grandma had standing pride and precious in the guest bedroom of her house. It ended a few inches up the thigh and moved about as I walked, but it was never so scandalous that the neighborhood housewives would chatter about it for weeks apiece. 

Still, despite myself, I nodded. 

Only nodded, for by that point I had stopped paying a dime of attention to her words, nor to my father's as he began to speak once again, of my list of to do's—dusting the figurines and the clocks, trimming grandmother's roses, having the lavatory shined and gleaming. For there, through the halo of the summer and the droplets of the stuttering sprinkler out in the front yard, I could see her—in the soft morning swelter, tall and beautiful, a woman. Oh, and how very much a woman she was. 

Not a girl, but a woman, and I was aflame, suddenly having moved to the window, sitting sprawled, childlike, on the cat's windowsill, somewhere between the velveteen curtains and the glass they covered. No, I was drawn like a moth to a flame. 

That I would be, for a very long time. 

"T-that woman..." 

"Mr. Sinclair's new wife." Mama answered me before she had heard the whole of my question, squinting at the woman's fair face, studying, assessing her from behind me. "She comes from China, or something. She's rather pretty, isn't she? You don't have to guess twice what reason she wedded poor Thomas for, though." 

"What?" I asked, though I knew well that marriage was not always entered out of love. My head tilted to one side, flames licking its way down my body, all of my skin flushing a slight red upon the sight of her. 

"Money, Pearl." Father. I flinched. 

Then, mother. "When women from faraway countries, countries not so very fortunate as our own, Pearl, marry men from here, it is money they do it for. A better way of life, perhaps. Judge as you will." 

"She smokes." I whispered—no, whimpered, lips tight and pink around the words—more to myself than to them, still watching, waiting, praying that she would meet my gaze but once, quick as a wink, quick as the thumping of my heart as it rose, akin to the wings of a bird beating about a cage. I watched her eyes, then her lips, her strong jaw, and then the cigarette pressed between her lithe fingers, disappearing in a pile of ashes at her heeled feet. 

I was not born to look at women like this, I knew. I believed. Women—all soft curves, delicate and frail—were meant to be loved by men, I was so sure, for only women knew how to smoothen their rough edges. 

My father, my mother, my church, everyone I knew had told me so. 

I covered my mouth, moving away from the window, and touched slightly at the shameful skin I had been living in—my fingertips stung like raw rejection, like penance.

"A nasty habit she's got." Mama tsk'ed, a flinch to her tongue. 

As well as she knew that I learned quickly, I knew how she felt about smoking, about drinking, about such needless, nonchalant sins—she had always feared that on the verge of adulthood, I would start to fit in with those women around town, the ones with the pale, mosquito-bitten legs and tobacco mouths and yellow teeth, curious and unpracticed as I was. I knew better, of course. I had girlfriends who smoked, girlfriends who took to bed men in filthy hotel rooms with jazz records playing in the back, but they were no less friends of mine because of it. I let them do as they pleased, and ultimately, they grew out of it. 

They grew out of those things out of boredom, sometimes out of regret, as I had grown out of so many things—out of pretty dresses, out of the backseat of papa's car. 

And at that moment, that very morning, between the birdsong and the quiet glances of my mother as I popped a single blueberry in my mouth, it was not my favorite pair of Mary Janes, nor an old record, but instead my very father's name that was added to that sorrowful little list.


End file.
